As a member of the Manhasset Board of Education over the past nine years, I have been fortunate to have the opportunity to meet many of you, my fellow community members, of all ages and from all sectors of our community.
I have enjoyed and benefited from hearing your thoughts, ideas and concerns while we actively engaged in the dialogue about educational issues of common interest to our community.
Our common bond has been our values – values that form the basis of our hopes and aspirations for our community, our children, and the quality of education we are able to provide them through the Manhasset public schools.
My initial decision to run for the school board was made at a very tumultuous time for our community. We were grappling with a multitude of challenges and choices and mounting fiscal stresses which created competing demands in our community. The civil dialogue was fractured.
Since that time, we have worked hard, together, to build a consensus. I am proud of our many accomplishments. Together, we worked hard and met and overcame many of the challenges we were facing. We laid a firm foundation for where our district stands today, including our core administrative team led by our superintendent, now in his ninth year at Manhasset, and developed key strengths on both the curricular and the business side.
Yet we still face significant challenges, most notably the intersection of today’s “tax-cap world” and the requirements of the newly adopted “Core Curriculum” and other unfunded mandates.
We can only effectively address these challenges by continuing to work together. By communicating effectively, by educating ourselves on issues so that we base our decisions on facts, and by always keeping in mind the best overall interests of the students in our community, I am confident that we will continue to make progress in the right direction.
My professional skills in banking and in managing financially troubled businesses and my belief in fiscal responsibility has only been one part of the equation. My commitment to bring about positive change and my sincere motivation to do what is right for all of our students, to serve our community and our children was, and remains, my motivation and the impetus for me to become involved.
I ask the Manhasset community to consider my demonstrated abilities as an objective board member, and my commitment to continue to bring about positive change under the guidance of fiscal responsibility, as well as my sincere motivation to do what is right for all of our students, and continue to place their confidence in me and allow me the opportunity and honor to serve another term on the Manhasset School Board.
Pat Aitken
Manhasset
